This Creepy-Crawly Looks Like A Spider With A Dog’s Head – And It’s Freaking People Out

All in all, the Amazon serves as more than 50 percent of Earth’s surviving rainforest. It is thought to be about 55 million years old, emerging from the Eocene period of Earth’s history. Today, it contains roughly 390 billion trees.

These many billions of trees are split into about 16,000 different species. Indeed, the sheer range of plant species in general found in the Amazon is more varied than in any other region around the world. As it stands, more than 40,000 different species of plant have been recorded there.

Of course, the array of animal life is also profoundly broad in the Amazon. Some 2.5 million different kinds of insects have been recorded there, as well as 2,200 species of fish, almost 1,300 kinds of bird and more than 400 types of mammal. Moreover, new species continue to be discovered regularly.